openness to grace, but also a setting about to become a better - PDF document

One of the privileges I have as a priest is to celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation with people. And having gone to confession myself since my childhood, and being with people now as a priest as they make things right with God, one thing I can assure you of (in case you don’t already know) is that God’s grace is so amazing. A person comes to confession and acknowledges they made a mistake. But they also pray during the act of contrition to strive to become a better person by avoiding the near occasion of sin in the future. Of course a person will sin again; we all do. But by going to confession, a person is acknowledging that they made a mistake, and want to become a better person. And there are so many stories of people who after they own up to what they did, allow to happen what we hear about in our first reading, where God’s messenger comes like the refining fire which refines the metal into silver and the fuller’s lye, the fuller being the cleaner of soiled cloths that make them return to white. All of this though requires an openness to grace, but also a setting about to become a better person. A week ago, the world lost one of the greatest basketball players of all time, Kobe Bryant, when his helicopter went down killing all on board. He boarded that helicopter, which he used as a way to cut down time in traffic allowing for more time to be spent as a family, after attending the early morning 7 a.m. Mass at Our Lady Queen of Angels church in Newport Beach. Mass though wasn’t a rare thing in his life. One of the tributes that came in about him was from singer Cristina Ballestero, who talked about encountering him at a weekday mass at Holy Family Cathedral in Orange, California. They went up to communion, and he waited for her as a sign of respect. She said his most inspiring trait was his decision to turn to his faith in God and receive God’s mercy and to be a better man after a “regretful decision.” That regretful decision was in 2003 when he was arrested for allegedly raping a woman in a hotel room in Colorado. The case never did make it to trial; it ended when he settled with a civil lawsuit and issued a public apology to her acknowledging that she did not consider the encounter to be consensual. He denied the crime, but he did admit to marital infidelity. And there were consequences. He and his wife struggled to hold their marriage together. She suffered a miscarriage, which Kobe blamed himself for. When his wife had enough later that year, she threw all of his clothes out on the street. It was a game day, and hours later he played the worst first half of his basketball career against the Magic, scoring just a single point. But, what happened at halftime was what some called the game when he became what would be his nickname, the black mamba. He reflected “I may never come back from this, but the only thing I can control right now is what I do on the basketball court.” Tracy McGrady of the Magic was defending him that night. And he recalls Mamba came out with a vengeance. He scored 37 points in the second half to lead his team to victory. But it was about more than basketball. He was beginning to understand he had to adopt an entirely different approach to his life and the game of basketball, namely the Mamba Page 1 of 4

Mentality. As he put it, the “mindset isn’t about seeking a result - it’s more about the process of getting to that result.” It was reflective of something internally that was going on. In a 2015 interview with GQ, reflecting on this time earlier in his life, he said: “ The one thing that really helped me during that process — I ’ m Catholic, I grew up Catholic, my kids are Catholic — was talking to a priest. It was actually kind of funny: He looks at me and says, ‘ Did you do it? ’ And I say, ‘ Of course not. ’ Then he asks, ‘ Do you have a good lawyer? ’ And I ’ m like, ‘ Uh, yeah, he ’ s phenomenal. ’ So then he just said, ‘ Let it go. Move on. God ’ s not going to give you anything you can ’ t handle, and it ’ s in his hands now. This is something you can ’ t control. So let it go. ’ And that was the turning point. He needed grace and that mentality to persevere through trials. He lost the NBA Finals to his former teammate, Shaquille O’Neil, and Phil Jackson who had left the Lakers to go to the Heat. and failed to lead a younger Lakers team to the playoffs the following season. He’d swallow his pride and welcome Phil Jackson back to the Lakers, and they’d go on titles in 2009 and 2010. But off the court, he applied that mentality to get done what needed to get done. He and his wife almost suffered a divorce, but worked on their marriage and reconciled in 2013. The couple, who had two children, went on to add two more to their family. He regularly attended Mass with his family at his parish. And he connected his Catholic faith to a family commitment to help the poor, through the Kobe & Vanessa Bryant Family Foundation. The foundation helped fund youth homeless shelters and other projects aimed at serving the poor. In his words: “ You have to do something that carries a little bit more weight to it, a little more significance, a little more purpose to it…Homelessness “ is one that kind of gets pushed on the back burner because it ’ s easy to point the blame at those who are homeless and say, ‘ Well, you made that bad decision. This is where you are. It ’ s your fault… In life, we all make mistakes and to stand back and allow someone to live that way and kind of wash your hands of it … that ’ s not right, ” he said. And so he did what he could to help the homeless, saying when people would say “help me, I want to turn my life around” his response would be “well, that’s why I’m here.” And he strived to do that in his own life too, working on his marriage saying “..you know, my reputation as an athlete is that I ’ m extremely determined, and that I will work my (tail) off. How could I do that in my professional life if I wasn ’ t like that in my personal life, when it affects my kids? It wouldn ’ t make any sense. ” He also resolved his multi- year feud with Shaquille O’Neal before he died, realizing it wasn’t worth it to stay angry as the two reconciled with Shaq giving a powerful tribute to him on TNT last week talking about his devastation and that Kobe was his little brother. Indeed, it would seem by all accounts that he strived to work hard on and off the court, becoming a better man by responding to the grace of God, becoming a better man. Applying the “Mamba Mentality” to his life - seeing who he wanted to become, and Page 2 of 4